The Challenge
Develop a thriving brand to provide the strategy and visual consistency for creating more valuable and attractive content to continue growing an audience of eager travellers that advertisers will pay to reach.
Outcome
The new brand strategy and identity provided direction and confidence to create more valuable content that has seen their audience grow by over 40k in the first eight months across multiple platforms.
Project Scope
- Brand Strategy
- Identity Design
For the past five years, Must Do Canada has been a creative outlet for founders Matt and Karla Bailey. What began as a passion project for them has turned into a business, and they were ready to take it to the next level and develop a thriving brand that provides a predictable and sustainable source of income.
Problem
Until this point, they had done most things themselves and had a basic logo designed on Fiverr. It did the job initially, but with a fast-growing website and YouTube channel, they needed to establish a consistent identity that would set them apart from competitors.
Additionally, they needed guidance for creating more valuable and attractive content that would continue growing an audience of eager travellers that advertisers will pay to reach.
Objective
We teamed up with Rob Howard to help Matt and Karla take Must Do Canada to the next level by developing a brand strategy and identity that would enable Must Do Canada to deliver more value to both travellers and advertisers.
Primary Audiences
Their primary audiences include Canadian Destination Marketers looking to attract leisure travellers to their destinations and couples travelling Canada seeking authentic and memorable experiences.
Brand Strategy
We guided them through our brand development process to differentiate them from other travel vloggers. The brand strategy created a strong foundation culminating in a brand compass to lead them forward with clarity and purpose.
Visual Identity
We redesigned their visual identity to improve its distinctiveness and memorability to help them stand out. We set out to create a bold mark that symbolized exploration and was undeniably Canadian. The core elements, a compass needle and maple leaf, convey the brand’s simple but straightforward call to experience Canada.
The flexibility of the visual system makes it easy to adapt to a variety of applications, from video thumbnails to travel guides to merchandise.
The number of logos based on the Canadian maple leaf makes it challenging to create something unique.
Solution
We established Must Do Canada as the contemporary Canadian travel guide for under 40 leisure travellers curious about Canada. We helped them focus on assisting travellers by demonstrating how to discover Canada’s endless expected and unexpected travel experiences. In addition, we revamped their brand identity to be much more distinct and memorable than before, improving their exposure and engagement across multiple platforms.
Rollout
We helped roll out the new brand creating graphic templates for YouTube thumbnails, in-video graphics and social media graphics. We also provided design direction and mockups for their website and newsletter redesign.
Outcome
The new strategy and revitalized identity gave Matt and Karla a lot of confidence and guidance to create more valuable content and ultimately grow their audience.
In just eight months, their audience has grown across every platform:
- 26k new subscribers on YouTube (33% growth)
- 10.7k new followers on Instagram (64% growth)
- 7.7k new followers on Facebook (54% growth)
”To grow our audience, we needed to stand out. So we invested in our brand strategy, website, and SEO. One of the best outcomes was our brand strategy, and especially the brand design done by Backcountry. It has given us a lot of confidence and direction when creating content and helped grow our audience a lot in the last year.
Matthew BaileyOwner
Credits
Brand Strategy: Rob Howard, Jon Allison
Brand Identity: Jon Allison